Barbie: A Christmas Carol (2008)

I just got through watching Barbie: A Christmas Carol, and wanted to write down a few thoughts while the movie was still fresh in my mind.

My first thought isn't so much a thought, per se, as it is an overall emotional response; a desire, in fact.  Right now, I want to find a Barbie doll - any Barbie doll - and yank its head off its shoulders.  I want to snap every goddamn joint on that thing, and, if possible, I'd really like to feed the pieces through a wood chipper.

And before you ask, no: I'm not overreacting.  It was really that bad.  It was worse - WORSE - than you'd expect a direct-to-DVD Barbie reinterpretation of A Christmas Carol to be.  In every imaginable way, it was worse.

The animation... oh, God.  Dear, God.  Why?  The characters were less lifelike than the toys they were based on.  They weren't just soulless: it was like some demonic spirit crawled up from the depths of Hell and inhabited these empty, plastic shells and brought them to a state of undeath.

Why would Hell do such a thing?  To ruin Christmas, of course.  To take a beloved holiday classic and twist it into a pink mockery of itself.  Think about it: this is a movie designed to simultaneously appeal to children who own Barbies, all the while it markets more Barbies to them.  At the same time, it pretends to preach a hollow message of giving.

They didn't just take A Christmas Carol and feed it to an overweight cat.  Oh, no.  They then collected the excrement and sold it.  TO CHILDREN.

This is crap, pure and simple.  If you have an enemy - someone you really hate - who has a young daughter, you could theoretically order their child a copy of this DVD.  But, before you do this, ask yourself how much you hate this person, how much pain you wish to inflict upon them.  If there is any shred of human decency in them - if there is hope for redemption - DO NOT DO THIS THING.

For it will destroy them.  As it destroyed me.

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